Design and construction of an in-house EA (Engineering Application) experiment

Year 2 students carry out four EA experiments (EA1 to EA4). Each experiment simply involves disassembling the equipment component, and then putting it back together again. Although such an activity will inform students about such principles, they could be made more engaging by incorporating such equipment within pipework assemblies that are similar to industrial plants. The intention is that the activity will then more more engaging to the students. Although this is a non-funded project, the experience has been invaluable to the technical team and also the cost savings will be of the order of a few thousands pounds.

Although engineers learn about theory and principles, they often have insufficient appreciation about the practical aspects of the equipment they are using. As an example, they might know what a valve does, but but might not understand the internal workings of a valve. There are currently a number of experiments that help this understanding, but one of the technical team has suggested how these experiments might be made more 'active', by requiring students to actually assemble whole pipework assemblies.

The replacement for EA1 has been built, and is awaiting further testing.